If at First You Don't Succeed ... Try, Try Again!

Nov. 16, 2007 — -- It seems counterintuitive, but for millionaire entrepreneurs Sara Blakely and Jake Burton, failure has been a key part of their recipe for success.

Blakely is the creator of Spanx, the hose without toes that flatters a women's posterior. Its not-too-tight textures put the honky-tonk in anyone's badonkadonk, and adds sleekness to the red carpet silhouettes of celebrities like Tyra Banks, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jessica Alba and Beyonce Knowles.

Blakely started her company in 2000 with just $5,000 in savings. Today, she commands a $100 million control-wear business. But she owes all of her success to her many failures along the way.

"I realize that failure is just life's way of nudging you and letting you know you're off course," she said. "If I hadn't failed, I wouldn't be here."

As a child, Blakely said her trial lawyer father got her to seek out challenges by asking her, "What did you fail at today?" But in college, she failed the LSAT.

"And for a little 8-year-old girl who would've told you her whole life, 'I'm gonna be a trial attorney,' that was a very devastating moment for me in my life," Blakely said.

After that, Blakely spent seven years selling fax machines office to office — uninvited. Did she fail? Did she ever.

"They would personally escort me out of out several buildings," said Blakely. "And I also had my business card ripped up in my face probably about twice a week."

That failing would have ruined a lot of people, but not Blakely. That's because she didn't view her inability to sell fax machines as a failure.

"To me, if I wasn't trying, I would be failing," she said.

That kind of approach gets a thumbs up from Elaine Eisenman, co-author of the business book "I Didn't See It Coming."

"Entrepreneurship is a continuum over a lifetime of different opportunities. So, when you look at it as a series of milestones over the course of time, failure doesn't take on such an important piece. It's just something that happens," Eisenman said.

Blakely's attitude toward failure kept her open to the idea that would reshape her bottom line, and everyone else's too.